by Jim O'Leary
But Nature’s dream
Did not become for him,
Is he better, worse
than you or me
or equal,
I don’t know”.
MY FRIEND, PAUL....07
Summer came and went
With little rain to dampen him
The streets were a comfort-base
For his shuffle ‘round with ease
And drifting was a pleasure
With the sunshine on his craw;
Always with his long coat on
Paul, one side adrift,
Redeemed the shopping trollies
For the hackneying matrons
Whose one euro meant so little
But to him a certain win;
He took his stand
From morning through to night
With a pee-break from time to time
To weather pain
And sometimes didn’t make it
With no clothes to change,.....
.....that day was never easy
But he wouldn’t missed his gig,
My friend was conscientious
To a driven fault.
The City’s shopping throngs
In an ever-prancing drive
Saw Paul sometimes,
Sometimes not;
When they did
He met them eye-to-eye
With a weathered smile;
When they didn’t
He wondered why
But manners were his strength,.....
.....A few times, though,
He muttered an unkind word.
He had some friends, a few
Who never slipped by him
Without acknowledging
His ever-presence
And he always shook them up
For his investments;
Paul had a dream
That , maybe once by fluke,
His dream, a coin of fortune,
Would be palmed to him;
He collected coins
In a tin box held by string,
His life’s endeavour,
But so far the coins were dross,
A motley ragged rattle
Of his empty-reaching dreams;
Hour upon hour, day upon day,
In elements harsh and not
He plies his pan-handle craft,
An inoffensive plea for bounty
From all-comers, friend or not,
Regardless of the time and tide
And with unrelenting shuffle-zeal
He presses on undaunted for his coin.
IN MEMORIAM
FOR ‘JOE KAY’, RIP,
(D. DECEMBER, 1994)
Face the music...
I cannot find the strength
To face the day;
The music haunts me
And the tune belies my need
And anyway
I cannot see beyond tonight;
The songs become
A blind line of despair
And words have
No more meaning....
....Goodnight, Goodbye;
He drifted into sleep
And will not wake,
He lost the tune
But had the last dance.
(‘Joe Kay’ was the temporary name given to a Dublin postman who took his own life in December, 1994 and who was not actually identified until some six months after his death)
FOR RAY, RIP, (D.1995)
When all the girls were gone
He left
And went his own way
Quietly,
It was his way to say goodbye;
In early days
He took a slow path
In a shy way
Seeking dream of dreams
And timelessly kept up
His trail
Through fashion-places
In search of love;
He found it many times,
A few times maybe,
Each time
A trip in ecstacy
The last as magic
As the first and more;
Estranged, he dreamed
After the ball was over
So to speak
But none were there or real,
The last and first
And all between were gone
And now he waited
Searched and died
Locked in his own embrace.
IN MEMORIAM PAT TIERNEY,
RIP; (D.04.01.1996)
Moon shadow,
Kissing the world goodbye
Was not my dream;
You, moon-load,
Saddled a boy with manhood
Helped by a cohort
Cocooned in surplice
And stole the tender years
And future of a child;
Why on my back,
You fucking coward,
Why, in the fragrant innocence
Of boy becoming man,
Of simple pubiscence,
Did you and you and you
Press on me
with your lusting drive;
Why, moon,
When your beams could shield,
Did you with beam on beam
Upon the back of helplessness
Take what was mine, not yours,
NOT YOURS!
I cannot find the words to say,
How could I say
That you or you or you are forgiven;
I can’t forgive for if I did
I’d die before I’ll die
And I will not give you
Or you or you that satisfaction;
I’ll know when it’s the time
And I’ll decide,
Not you or you or you,
Because this life is mine!
Where is the end
Of this demeaning nightmare,
What does it mean or is there anything,
Where does it begin or is there a beginning,
The turmoil of debate on life is death,
I cannot face that death;
I can, I must,
Its mine
And anyway
What’s HIV?
I wish I knew
Or do I know
That life was doomed
From its beginning;
Where is my childhood
And my dreams of youth,
Are they all gone
Or were they ever there;
I’ll know
When it’s the time
For my life
And I’ll decide
When its to end;
I’m Pat,
I love you, Pat,
Why did it take
So long to say;
I’m Pat,
I’m dead,
What’s life,.....
.....I’m fine now.
(Pat Tierney died by his own hand in a Dublin churchyard on the 4th January, 1996, his thirty-ninth birthday. He had been forced to spend his early life in an ‘Industrial School’ run by Catholic clergy and sanctioned and supported by the Irish State; He told his tragic story in a book entitled ‘The Moon on my Back’.)
IN MEMORIAM THOM MCGINTY,
RIP, (D.1995)
On Grafton Street
Afterwards
The Sun shone
And the beauty people
Were as only
They can be
And the stream of life
Continued;
I knew you
Only barely
But I knew
Your time and space
And presence
And I saw you cry;
Now I walk
The street
And the Diceman’s
Gone.....
.....Goodbye, Thom.
IN MEMORIAM JACK, RIP, 18.04.2005
A moment split-time
Made him in a love-embrace,
A tiny thing,
A start of Jack to grow,
A min
i-version
Of a human beauty-form;
He grew awhile inside
And kicked for life
From day to day
To being with us;
He sucked and rolled,
An embryo-form,
To face the tunnel
Of a World embrace;
A gasping pain
Warned of sadness
And a flow-fear
took control;
The safe-womb space
Was flawed for once,
Protection failed
And Jack was gone;
The womb-sack
Brought him home,
Needed here
But wanted in another place
To Heaven;
Jack, an angel-child,
Became an angel forever.
IN MEMORIAM JOHN MCGAHERN,
RIP, (1934-2006).
Hello, John,
Born to poor and Mammy’s pain,
To be reared to Daddy’s fist
And dire nothing;
Gone to school, John,
For the way to educate
To a teacher, in ideals,
To be sent away....You were!
Earlier, you were the pup
Of your beginning
Walking wooded lanes
Of the country of your baby-days;
Later, cringing at the brink
Where you cut your writing teeth,
You strolled through
The Nature-Lanes of home;
A Teacher, Educator,
embraced the frame
Of that back-time
But the Moral of
The Maidens Dancing
Shook the heavens
and readied flames of hell
For you, they said,.....
.....You paid the price!
The Scholar paid the price
When the church’s Hammer
Fell on his ‘sad’ life
And, naturally,
As in the place you walked and wrote,
You took the crown of Joyce and others
And the quiff of Beckett and the rest;
Naturally,
You shook the mantle
of those erstwhile heroes
into the memory
of an empty chasm
where excitement,
driven by a Gaelic
Scholar-Dream,
Took awards from the far winds
To an immortal frame
With words and without dreams,
With DREAMS;
Now gone, your voice
Acclaimed in my place
And in yours,
The message of your life,
Was published to applause
In your sojourn here and after;
Your lisp-voice, a chronicle
Of a life well known,
Spoke of prison
And of freedom
Born, and brave alive,
Now dead but lives.....
......Good Night, John
And God Bless!
FOR JOHN MCGAHERN,
RIP; (1934-2006).
Early
In the country
You saw
a job for life
And fought
for that;
Later
in your words
You looked
for future,
And sculpted
A new place;
In the end,
In the world of you,
A place in words
was built
And a woman-world
Was born.
FOR FRANK NASH, RIP.
Sadness awaited
Those around him, kin and not,
The many who were reached
By his entrancing soft embrace;
The boy came of a soft beginning,
The warmth of simple love
And grew from that to search horizons
For the wonder of all life;
That boy sucked
Of the wonder-breast
Of local nurture
And swelled to be what he became;
The man, again, again,
Grew more not for himself
But for the people of his place
And reached the summit of that dedication;
That human-effort man
Reached the fence, his end of being,
And in its face he was not daunted
By the prospect of his journey,.....
......He was ready to go home;
Now, the sadness has evaporated
Into the soft-mist
Of the best of memory
And the man is celebrated
For the life of him, Frank Nash,
Safe Home, Frank.
IN MEMORIAM EMER, RIP, D. 2007
Sad thoughts abounded
When the end of beauty came;
The news was bad,
her young last breath
was taken
by her wish and hand;
She planned each step,
her trip to friends,
embrace of family,
and her leaving
and she left,
champagne-borne,
tablet-laden,
in a quiet sleep;
Her friend,
my child,
heard the news
with shock
and tears flowed loose;
The memories
of a living life,
together and apart,
swept through her heart;
Crying,
with her children close,
she sought an answer
for the end of Emer;
Sobbing,
she took her child
in a hug to her
and the boy asked
“Was she broken, Mam?’
”She was” my girl replied......
IN MEMORIAM
ANNA MARIA PATTWELL, RIP.
I tipped the candle over
It wasn’t my fault
It was the badger in my head;
A badness took my brain
And I am lost
In a mindless maze;
I saw the badger
And a freeway
In my mind took over;
Not thinking, not being clear
Of the world or where I was,
I looked and saw a haze;
I saw that badger
And I tried my best
To think
But nothing came;
I am lost and trying to think
But my mind is gone;
I am alone fenced off
Not here at all
For me or you,....
.....I’m sorry Son.
IN MEMORIAM MICK LALLY, RIP.
Life left a Legend yesterday
And the people,
Public, private, everyone,
Lamented his too early passing,
Felt a loss in their bones,
The last trip of a journeyman;
"You took us by surprise, Mick,
You had much done, more to do";
"I was finished, well and truly finished",
He answered with a cheesy grin;
"The rest will do me good
Like many actors for a while
But I'll look out for chances
On the new-life stage that waits,
I'll surely see ye all again
At my first performance there".
His last breath spent,
Mick travelled
In his unique style
To the place set out for him
On a heavenly stage
Where waiting, "Holy God"
Was the Director
For his best endeavours yet;
"The World will miss you, Mick,"
The stages where he stepped
Are echoing and his Gaelic voice
Whispers back "
Well, Holy God,
I'm not really gone at all,
Just visiting Home”.
IN MEMORIAM JIM O'DRISCOLL, RIP.
Blossoms
Upturned faces
Climbed to the sky
As the Sun lifted
From its bed;
The gold-orb
Spanned its light
To the world below
And dark was gone
To let him grow
And hear the flowers sing
In their angel-voice
All the colours blooming
In his wonder mind;
But a darkness
Fell too soon
On his blossom-life,
The light went out
And he went home,....
....Good Night, Jim.
PAINTING THE WIND.....
(In Memoriam Denis Raphael Greene, RIP.)
The wind blew in
A shaggy yellow-red embrace
Of the Spring Sun
Glowing through the day
To bear the soul
Of an Island-Man away;
He had passed with the stars,
With the early Sun,
And his leaving breath
Took his life-vapour
To a non-earth place
Where he could rest in laughter;
The world, his past, is gone
To his new beginning,
A soft-sun warming the path
Of his last journey
While chilly winds
Forced collars to turn up;
Off-white clouds
Sparse in the sky
Gave way to new-lines
Of departing planes
Searching their path
On a westward journey
Past the home of his beginning
Past Valentia and beyond;
The world witnessed
The final journey
Of an Island Man
And saw him safely home.
IN LOVING MEMORY.....
Bent and shagged to death
She worked her way
Through feelings cold
And sucked inside
The frame-creation
Of an angry man;
Fucked and empty
She walked her path
Unsafe but holding
An empty dream of love
In the dead vessel
Of his non-embrace;
But she cracked
Beneath his rampant ire
And took the cash to leave
But before she left
She fucked him back
With a long blade
To send him home
In return-pain,.....
.....Then she walked
behind his coffin
to his grave
in loving memory!
A DARK PLACE